


The Lady of Situations

by illumynare



Category: Destiny (Video Game), The Waste Land - T. S. Eliot
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Canon-Typical Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, but not 100 percent hopeless, gratuitous T. S. Eliot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 19:43:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6128005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illumynare/pseuds/illumynare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eris Morn never returned to the Tower. But her legend does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lady of Situations

_Here, said she,_  
_Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,_  
_(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)_  
_Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,_  
_The lady of situations._

 

**V. The Burial of the Dead**

The Hunters have a legend.

The Titans have war-stories. The Warlocks have theories. But they Hunters, they have a legend: the Lady of Situations.

( _Because,_ laughs any Hunter who tells you this, _she only turns up when we're in, you know, one of_ those _situations.)_

She will not always come. When she comes, she will not always help. There are three glowing eyes in her face, and her blade has been wet with Guardian blood.

But it's a Hunter knife she carries. She was a Hunter once, this Lady who walks between the shadows and the shadows, between the cusp of chance and seeming.

When she comes, she comes for them.

 

* * *

 _I have heard the key_  
_Turn in the door once and turn once only_  
_We think of the key, each in his prison_  
_Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison_  
_Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours_  
_Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus_

 

**IV. A Game of Chess**

TYPE: Transcript.

DESCRIPTION: Debriefing.

ASSOCIATIONS: Hive; Hunters; Lunar Interdict; Temple of Crota; Unconfirmed Rumors

//AUDIO UNAVAILABLE//

//TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS.../

[IKORA] You went into the Temple of Crota.

[HUNTER] We weren't— we didn't meant to go in. But Yazda's Ghost said there were readings inside, like something alive—a Guardian—

[silence]

[silence]

[HUNTER] It was a trap.

[CAYDE-6] What an enormous surprise.

[HUNTER] Guess we'd all been getting too confident. The Lunar Interdict lifted, that Guardian going all the way down to the Chamber of Night— We went in, and there was an Ogre. And Thralls. And a Wizard.

[silence]

[HUNTER] I think we coulda gotten out, but the Acolytes grabbed Yazda. Dragged him deeper inside. We went after him.

[silence]

[HUNTER] We found him, but . . . there wasn't a lot left.

[IKORA] I'm sorry. Then what?

[CAYDE-6] Did you make 'em bleed?

[HUNTER] We tried. But there were so many. Haakon went down. Maka too. I was—I thought I was next, but—

[silence]

[HUNTER] I never believed it, you know? The stories about the Lady. But I _saw_ her. A shadow, with three glowing eyes. There were two Knights and an Acolyte trying to eat me, and she sliced them to ribbons. Then she put her hand on my forehead and asked if I could walk. Of course I said yes. But I couldn't. And she—

[silence]

[silence]

[HUNTER] I don't know what it was she sang. It was like—knives and worms and thunder. But when I could see again, I was out of the Pit.

 

* * *

  _A woman drew her long black hair out tight_  
_And fiddled whisper music on those strings_  
_And bats with baby faces in the violet light_  
_Whistled, and beat their wings_  
_And crawled head downward down a blackened wall_  
_And upside down in air were towers_  
_Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours_  
_And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells._

 

**III. The Fire Sermon**

There is an arrogance inherent to these geometries.

Eris Morn (if that can still be her name) is no longer unfamiliar with it.

She learned it with every breath and kiss she absorbed from Toland. With every secret and every heartbeat she wrenched from the shadows. With every moment that she lived.

To be, is to defy those who are. To disdain those who are not.

Eris is, she exists, she _wills_ herself against the chaos of Crota's throne-realm, and the Darkness sings to her in return. By this logic, she disdains all those who allow themselves to die. Who fall beneath the knives the claws the teeth of the Hive.

The blood upon her knife, it sings to her as well. She licks it, she tastes the namesfateslostsorrows _helpme—_

Let us not be coy: Eris has killed Guardians. She will again. It is the logic of this place, where emerald shadows swirl around a coal-black sun. Blood on her teeth, death in her throat: this is the sword-logic that saved her.

But logic seduces only Warlocks.

( _Obviously,_ huffs the memory of Toland in her mind, Toland who has left again to seek Osiris.)

It is arrogance that calls to Hunters, that lures them out into the Wild armed only with a single knife: the arrogance of _my luck and my wits and my skill can overcome your might_. And Eris, if she is anything, is a Hunter still.

So it is the arrogance of this world that calls to her: the belief that she can shape its power to her purpose, wield it against those she calls enemies.

(Eris has lost all her Light. But not her hatred of the Dark.)

She glides across the Sea of Screams, where a million million lines of pain carve themselves into the air, sinuous curves of agony that shiver a little time and then are gone. When she finds one that is from a Guardian—that tastes of fractured, still enduring Light, of Hunter spite and will—she follows it.

And this time, she goes to help.

 

* * *

  _Who is the third who walks always beside you?_  
_When I count, there are only you and I together_  
_But when I look ahead up the white road_  
_There is always another one walking beside you_  
_Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded_  
_I do not know whether a man or a woman  
_ _—But who is that on the other side of you?_

 

**II. Death by Water**

RECORD 034-GAMMA-9985

Ghost. Ghost, can you hear me?

No. No, don't heal me. Save your light. I need you to make a recording.

[breathing]

Three of us broke the Lunar Interdict. We went to the Mare Imbrium. Our Warlock, Vashti-7, thought we could learn something from the wreckage of the battle.

Bones. That's all we found. Thousand of bones, picked clean by Thralls.

Then the ground gave way under our feet. It's honeycombed here beneath the surface. Miles and miles of tunnels.

We lost Vashti in the fall. Madoc and I looked for her. By the time we gave up, we'd gone too far inside.

We're not far below the surface. I'm still sure of that. But every tunnel looked the same. When we tried to mark the walls, the marks disappeared as soon as we turned around.

[gasp]

[heavy breathing]

No. I have to finish this.

DON'T HEAL ME SOMEONE HAS TO KNOW.

. . . as we wandered the tunnels, we became convinced that there was a third one walking between us. When we looked, there was no one there. This conviction persisted, even after we killed ourselves and resurrected.

The worst was the dreams.

Madoc dreamed of a man speaking in a quiet, dry voice. He said it told him equations that he couldn't remember upon waking. He always woke screaming.

I dreamed of a woman singing to me. Ghost, they were songs from the Tower. I became convinced that the singing was meant to comfort me, and also that she planned to kill me.

Today I woke up and Madoc was cutting me open with his knife. He said it was logical. Necessary.

I broke his neck. His Ghost was—I don't want to say.

If anyone finds this. Tell them back at the Tower. Tell them there's something besides the Hive, haunting the Moon.

Ghost?

Ghost, I can hear her singing now.

[screams]

[static]

END OF RECORDING

 

* * *

 _Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,_  
_And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,_  
_Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,  
_ _Which I am forbidden to see._

 

**I. What the Thunder Said**

Eris crouches in the hollow of the rock and waits to die.

She tried to live. But now her Ghost is dead. The little white pieces—smudged with dirt and worse—are a limp pile, cupped in her hands. She's waited hours for them to move.

They won't.

She knows why.

After everything—after the Ogres and Ir Yût and Crota himself—it was a simple Wizard that caught her. It bound her to a bed of bones, just as she had seen Omar bound, and Eris panicked, writhing and screaming for help that would never, never come. Her Ghost whirled around her head, too weak to do anything but hum in faint distress.

The Wizard took her eyes, one by one.

And somewhere in the middle of that agony, as her vision went from half to none, she remembered words that Toland had whispered to her, as they huddled together in the darkness of the Stills. Secrets and incantations that had repulsed her but also awakened a dry, fathomless thirst.

The words seared her throat as she screamed them. The Wizard shrieked. The bones binding her down broke.

Eris found her knife. She took what had been taken from her. Toland would have been proud.

And when she could see again, her Ghost was dead.

If Eris no longer belongs to the Light, if she has smothered the Ghost that summoned her back, then what is she?

Nothing.

So she waits to die.

The three eyes burn in her forehead. They weep continuously, not tears but something sticky and black that itches on her skin. They let her see in the dark far better than her human eyes did, but her human brain can barely hope with the triple images; every time she even twitches her head, her vision swims and she wants to vomit.

Madness oozes through her brain. She hears her fireteam now, all the time: Omar's screams. Eriana burning. The crack of Sai's bones as the Thralls tear her apart. Vell's last Fist of Havoc.

She hears them calling: Eris, why didn't you save us. Eris, why haven't you died already. ERIS, WHY—

_Eris._

Toland's voice cuts through the screams, soft and dry but somehow louder. She blinks—the world wavers—she sees him standing before her, the same slouched posture she remembers, but fuzzy around the edges.

"You're dead," she says.

 _Nothing has ever lived that will not die._ He speaks in his most irritatingly superior tones as he tilts his head, examining her. _I like your handiwork. Quite impressive, for a Hunter._

"You can't be here," she says. "Ir Yût—"

_Undid me. Unbound me. It was not a common death, and so it did not end me._

He settles on her lap, too heavy for a hallucination. His fingers trace the edges of the chitin covering her forehead, and she shudders. Then his dry, narrow lips find hers, and she knows the shape of this kiss. Knows he is real.

 _Eris,_ says Toland, _Allow me to redefine you, as Ir Yût did for me._

Her breath comes in short pants now. From the kiss, from the burning pain of her eyes, from the weight of the Darkness all around her.

 _You were meant for more than this,_ he whispers against her neck, and then rises, holds out a hand. _Eris, come with me._

She thinks of the Tower, of sunlight glowing reflected off the Traveller, of sitting in the courtyard trees and singing. She longs for those things still, hard enough to crack her ribs. But she's lost them. She's lost.

Eris lets the pieces of her Ghost drop to the ground, roll away into the Darkness.

And she takes his hand.

 _These fragments I have shored against my ruins  
_ _Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe._

**Author's Note:**

> I did not write enough angsty Evanescence songfics in my youth, so I'm required to make up for it with self-indulgent T. S. Eliot songfics now. All quotations are from The Waste Land (which Toland would have totally loved, okay).


End file.
